One of the things I most want my history students to be able to do is to apply what they\u2019ve learned in a new situation.\u00a0 If they read a primary or secondary source or if we discuss something in class, it\u2019s important to me that they be able to take their cumulative understanding of a period of time, or a place, or a culture, and apply it to answer a fresh question.<\/p>\n
One way that I do this is by having students play with the question of \u2018liberty\u2019 in my American history classes.\u00a0 Liberty is a weighted concept \u2013 it\u2019s part of the dominant narrative of American history in the U.S., as well as being something that is often thought of in absolutist terms.\u00a0 I want my students to think about liberty in much more complicated ways.<\/p>\n
My approach: I give my students a handout up to a dozen composite historical characters on it (see below).\u00a0 Each character is written so that their liberties (or lack thereof) are complicated \u2013 it\u2019s never as simple as \u201cthis person is free\u201d or \u201cthis person is unfree.\u201d\u00a0 Students have to consider race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, enslavement, indenture, geography, and political allegiances to correctly weigh how free someone was.\u00a0 To make this easier, I put students in small groups of three or four so that there are multiple perspectives to consider and multiple opportunities to remember details that might be relevant.<\/p>\n